September 2011

September 28, 2011

Insomnia is not good. Mix insomnia with a smart phone? Double not good. Twice last night I was peering into my tiny device (so much so, my hand went numb holding it in the air). All the buzz on Facebook, of course, was that it's creator, Mark Zuckerberg, was about to toss our cyberworlds upside down again. By the time I finished reading about the impending changes, I was a tad nauseated. Get a life, you say. Get off Facebook. Many are threatening to do just that....

BUT, you see, we creatives, us authors and others embeded in our evolving world of communications, are tied umbilically to social media. By true necessity of our times. It can make us or break us. If an author ignores social media...Toast. I'm watching it happen to a friend of mine now who's coasting, expecting their publisher to do all the work. Great book, but Stephen King this author is not. Authors must work and prospective publishers do take just that seriously into account. Along with numbers and likes and stats. Sick. I'm sick at thought of more work. As if keeping up were not enough. Not to mention feeling three years behind because I keep hitting the walls of my own technological ignorance.

The latest creation of the Mighty One of Social Media is that our new Facebook profiles will be a compendium of our lives. A scrapbook timeline where we post photos of ourselves as babies, bare chested and our bottoms swaddled in diapers, along with all other life-time milestones we deem important. The geeks among my friend base were already creating theirs. Grumble.

How old is this guy? And all this posting and scanning and yada-yada come naturally. To Some. I'll save the whining about my age and getting out of the traditional workplace just as the PC revolution burst into reality and being a single mother and....Good Lord, this stuff takes time.

For those peeking into "Journey with Grace" via Facebook today (Welcome!) Asperger's is a form of high functioning autism. The reason I believe some people react so negatively to speculation that Zuckerberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and *the late great pop artist Andy Warhol, just to name a fewcontemporary figures have/*had Asperger's is because their understanding of the syndrome is limited. Their understanding is barricaded by the perception of "disAbility." People with Asperger's (or any disAbility) are not broken. They are just different. And sometimes differently gifted in some very publicly beneficial ways.

But then back to the ways in which Zuckerberg is evolving and thus we will also be evolving on his Facebook creation....I cyber-snapped at a dear second cousin in the wee hours last night when I read how she liked the coming Facebook changes but could see how her mother--my first cousin--less than 10 years my senior, would be calling, pleading for help. There is a digital divide, I reminded her. Younger people raised from diaperdom with computers for breakfast just don't get it. Case in point was the rude lil' waitress at Carrabba's who howled on with belly-shaking laughter when she walked up on my conversation with a 83-year-old family member just as she had asked me: "What is Facebook?" "That's the funniest thing I ever heard," crowed the waitress unkindly. My stern look, my attempt to explain to her the realities of the digital divide never seemed to sink in with her. In the end, I think, only, she got the message that we were not happy with her. This new profile page and relearning something from a site that asks us constantly to relearn things that are not second nature to those of us over 40, is going to baffle folks all the more.

And, do I/we want to make available that much info about ourselves for all the world to see? Yes, you can put up filters, but many of us get friend requests (future book buyers) from people we do not even know--asking us to "be their friend." And, our personal business pages (which I've never gotten around to fully fleshing out, like so many other technology to-do's) are getting the short shrift, in the meantime, because of the new annoying, constant, dizzying, left-hand columned ticker-tape parade of posts.

I speculate that once again, in his lack of Aspergian theory-of-mind, young Zuckerberg thinks that we all will delight in making the time to round up photos and scan them into our computers and post them for everyone to see. Not....Go ahead. Call me Scrooge.

Others are saying some of this more persuasively. And one of them is blogger Amanda Pagliarini, from whose post, "What the Zuck?" I borrowed a portion of this "Journey with Grace" post's title. We are being led in this social media phenomenon by a person who has social deficits (and many brilliant assets). And as I'm increasingly reading and hearing from people regarding Facebook--and I'd say all social media--we are becoming less personal and less sensitive and, as some are also saying more navel-gazing. But our profiles? Well, ain't they pretty. Even if only we see them.

Here's my original post about Zuckerberg & Asperger's: [Comes back with supposed link and reports (seriously)] Guess what? do-do-do-do...It's no longer there! It's gone missing. Huh? Typepad, I'm filing a Help Ticket....But you can find it at Autisable, where I also blog about autism. And there, it's gotten 27,000 hits (Thank you!) and it's share of unkind comments. (Oh, well.) (And agreements!) (And, blush, I've not gotten down to that little 'nother important to-do to reply over there. Oops. To my credit, the kind folks there found me on Twitter back when I began blogging late 2008 and auto signed up my blog .) I did run the post again in January, on "The Journey with Grace" when The Social Network garnered a Golden Globe.

September 26, 2011

Nashville's high-end mall just racheted up the chi-chi. There's a new kid in town. And, in a scenario akin to the Beverly Hillbillies seeing a cement pond for the first time ever, I'd forgotten until I went seeking a cure for out-of-control curls at the mall that a new gal named Nordstrom had opened her doors there only four days before. The moment we stepped from the jammed parking lot onto the sidewalk filled with Starbucks patrons, I noticed the mood had shifted. And then as we entered the mall's glass bank of doors, I saw more evidence. More...high end customers. Extra bronzed. Exuberantly whitened. Perfectly plumped, plucked and sucked in all the right places, uber blonde and donning ultra fashioned clothing. I saw a woman I speculated to be about my age. Wow, she looked good but it made me tired to think of all the work it took to create that head to toe superbly and flawlessly coiffed look. The energy of the entire mall was jazzed. The gay cameraderie was out and all about, proud and strong. Other merchants were buzzing...:"Have you been yet?" More than one questioned. Everyone seemed excited about their new neighbor.

While we were there on earnest business--Grace and I decided to check out the new kid on the block....Nordstrom classed out her competition by departing from racks and racks of retail overkill. The cosmetic counters and seductive jewelry displays sparkled, gleamed and lured beneath the brightest lights I'd ever seen in a department store. Gorgeous. Twinkling like Christmas, sans the saccharin happy carols, that I'm sure will start piping through the muzak speakers by Halloween. The new gal's wares were arranged in casual, inviting chic boutique style. Just enough to tantalize and not overwhelm. I found a nook that perfectly suited my tastes. Three in fact. The shoes--which only on sale can I maybe afford. Everyone knows Nordstroms has fab shoe sales, right? The only pair I dared to pick up and peek at the price revealed a $500 tag. Prada. I put it down quickly. The lingerie was a cut above (no pun intended) I'd seen anywhere else in town. I thought maybe on sale I could own one of those hot pink silk spaghetti-strapped numbers. The sales girl's affected e-long-gated syl-lah-bles attested to the uniqueness of the department's goods. And then I found a style home in the Free People boutique. Only, I had to wonder, were the people who made the garments actually free or enslavened to our voracious Euro-American taste for style? The dress that wooed me, softly whispering my name, was $198. And so we sauntered out, having satiated our curious selves with a healthy dose of eye-candy. We'd met the new girl. She was right pretty.

Well done, Nordstrom. I heard that you aimed to bring in $1 million during your opening weekend and instead doubled that plus-some. Congratulations. Welcome to Nashville. I truly am glad you're here. I'll come back when I can think of something I need and you've fiercely slashed your tags. I'll leave the shelling out to the chi-chi set. May they shop happily ever after. Good for them. Truly.

September 23, 2011

"This summer, 59 students wrote 59 novels in a month. That's 2.5 million words, and over 5,000 hours of tv-watching, video-game playing, Facebooking, and texting replaced with WRITING. That's a revolution." --Kristen House

If you've been reading here the last few months, you may have gathered I'm rather ga-ga about Kristen House and her "novel idea." Who wouldn't be enthralled with the inventive creation of this 30something college professor--who's also and mother of soon-to-be-three small children--to teach middle-and-high schoolers and adults how to write a novel in mere weeks....

Last spring, I met House in the packed library of my daughter's high school. Angry parents lined up to protest the dimissal of a 30-plus year veteran, award-winning, innovative international baccalaureate teacher in lieu of the school board's new agenda for academies. I'd just spoken about how the changes were limiting opportunities for meaningful inclusion for students with disAbilities such as my daughter. As House took the microphone, she was told by a moderator that she could not speak because she was not a member of the PTSA. This was true but House, as she told us had left her two babies at home to come there that night and speak on behalf of the teacher who inspired her to write her first novel--the method she is now using with A Novel Idea. "I WILL NOT BE SILENCED," House proclaimed loudly and passionately visibly with every cell of her small, carrot-topped frame after the failed attempt to muzzle her. "It is my fight as an American to speak and I will die defending that right,"she began....

In that instant, I decided this woman and I must become friends. And, lucky me, we are.

The First Novel Idea for fall begins tomorrow, but is for ANI alumni. A Monday evening class (5:30-7:00) for kids ages 11 - 17 begins, September 25 and a Wednesday evening class (7:30-9:00) for adults begins September 28th. Both classes meet once per week for 9 weeks. More details at ANovelIdeaNashville.com. And for past posts on ANI, here at "The Journey with Grace," click here and here.

You can also read House's fabulous posts at A Novel Idea: The Blog. I'm never disappointed in the crisp, rich writing, contemplative and sometimes a bit gut-wrenching, tissue-dabbing perspective, often with a dash of humor tossed into the mix.

Since I just learned about this luscious-sounding read Sunday, I've not read it yet, but will add it to my list. What a great title, eh? That will suck in most any autism parent who's open to the concept that autism is not a dirty word. Secondly, I'm sure every autism parent-teacher-auxiliary-service-provider reading here can relate to the dinosaur images. Am I right? Priceless....

September 19, 2011

Sharing this via my amazing friend author Whitney Ferre @ CreativelyFit.com. If you're lucky enough to be in the lovely Pacific Northwest, Whitney, formerly of The Creative Fitness Center and Rumours Gallery and Wine Bars, packed her bags and moved there from Nashville this summer. (Sniff.) She's available to travel, speak and teach and via online classes for the rest of us, nonetheless. I'm enrolled in one of her classes now.

A little more about this video from the website www.fouryearsgo.org:"Take a stand to change the course of history. Humanity is on an unsustainable path, headed in a direction that no one wants—and there is limited time to turn things around. At the same time, the solutions and technologies to address this crisis already exist. What is missing is the commitment and will to act. FOUR YEARS. GO. is about generating that will."

Pardon the mess, I'm still unpacking. (Vintage glider found and rehabbed by Ginny Speaks of All is Well.) But Bebo can't wait for me to get my porch in order. I must tell you now to go see this fun guy's show at the gorgeous Ensworth High School. If only Metro Nashville Public Schools could be blessed with an drop of that wealth. Of all those years of driving by and gawking at the copper roofs, it was my first time I'd been on that stunning campus. The drama and art teachers there were gracious and explained to my art-adoring-curious self that Dr. Benjamin Caldwell and family's art collection had been donated to the school, including several--gasp: William Edmondson sculptures that Caldwell had requested be displayed out on the school grounds. Wow. The school's Theater Gallery is home to Bebo Folk Art through September 23. Fun guy, Bebo is also showing right now at Montgomery Bell Academy's Fall Art Show through September 30. If you miss these shows, you can also find him with a smile and ready with a wacky comment most Saturday's at Franklin's stellar Farmer's Market. (Apologies for late posting this this week and this month as there was lots of competing events!)

Here's what Bebo has to say about his work, below. This dude's special, as illustrated in his artist statement. I am blessed and inspired by his words:

"I am an outsider artist. I make my art out of sawmill lumber and other found materials. I sculpt the wood with my saw and sander into shapes of fish, snakes, gators and other critters, flowers, butterflies, etc. I make all sizes from a few inches to 15 feet long. I paint them using enamel paint so that the pieces can be hung outside if you want to. I also make angels and signs with inspirational messages on them. I paint them to remind me how to live. I am a musician [this is Nashville, you know] and I love the blues, so I make “Bluesmen”, too. God has blessed me through my art.

"It makes me smile and laugh making all my artwork. When people buy a piece of my art, the main thing they say to me is, 'It makes me happy, it makes me smile.' I try to give people a sense of hope. If I can do it you can too. I wake up in the morning and ask God to help me that day, and at night I thank him for helping me. He hasn’t let me down. I hope that I can inspire others to enjoy life and live in peace.

"I first started making art in 1993. Since that time I have met so many people and made so many friends. My art has blessed me and my hope is that my art can be a blessing to others."

September 14, 2011

As you know, it's been an anniversary week for our Dear Country. A painful one. Like you, I indulged in some tender time travel. Again, on Tuesday morning I found myself paging and pondering through the memories of yesteryear. And then, it occurred to me. No wonder. No wonder--because two years ago, 9/11 was also the date that our book was due at the printers. We had padded our timeline so it was cool that we didn't make that date. But I remember it well. I got rear-ended by a sweet, young Episcopal priest that afternoon while driving Grace home from high school, where she was a freshman. While we waited and waited for the cop that never bothered to come, the kind, apologetic young man and I talked shop: the church and autism. I went the drive-thru on the way home and mindlessly consumed a hamburger, fries and a Coke. Huh? (Not in my usual culinary fare.)

Yesterday, for some reason, I called up our book's website, (thank you Misty Galyon!) and virtually thumbed through Rebekah Pope's beautiful pictures of special souls. I flipped to "Our Creative Team," pausing on each beautiful, smiling face--captured in Rebekah's beautiful, crisp black and white portraiture for which she is so gifted. Visually, I caressed each member with the fondness of my heart-felt love and bottomless appreciation....Together, two years ago this fall, we did this:

I'm proud. And, now, for the next chapter!: Tomorrow, my book mentor's in town from the fabulous far flung Portland, Ore. I'm not enrolled in MTSU's Writer's Loft this semester, but I'm still working with Charlotte Rains Dixon. (She's available for coaching and FANTASTIC!) So, I "hit the book," again next week: The Journey with Grace. Keep reading here and wish me a huge dousing down pour of heavenly inspiration. And, thanks so much for your support via Facebook, comments on the blog here, (more, more, please!); plus your kind and thoughtful email responses to me.

Almost forgot to mention that I'm also pulling back on track, with some techno-learning-curve help along with somefriends to birth that aforementioned FREE e-book in the meantime. Woo-hoo! (Or, Choo-Choo, here I come! And, yes, I know I'm corny. Blush.)

So: What creative projects are you proud of and what are you working on, dear readers? Tell me, tell me!

September 12, 2011

Yesterday morning after 10 minutes of NPR, I turned off the radio and proceeded with the day. I don't do media coverage of horror. To me, it's self-inflicted emotional torture. All I need to know are the facts and see an image one time. Not watch it over and over ad nauseaum. An email from a friend indicated she was having trouble with her emotions that raw morning, the ten-year anniversary of 9-11. I sifted through my own emotions. I posted on "The Journey With Grace" here about peace--another's words that resonated with me. Facebook was full of "Where were you?" posts. But the urge and the words to put my recollections to virtual & cathartic paper came later, in the early afternoon. Like you, I remember well where I was when I first heard the news:

I had dropped Grace off at school--Gower Elementary--where she was in first grade, and drove to Star Bagel. They still had a satellite shop on Davidson Road then. People there were flustered and all a buzz talking to each other. I think it was the excited, bug-eyed clerk who said he had family in New York. He told me that something bizarre had happened there and he was worried about their safety.

I cannot remember who first gave me the actual news of what happened. But in the growing line of people behind me, from someone, I learned the unfathomable news of a plane flying into the trade towers. One woman's husband was a pilot. He had called her, she told us. His plane was grounded and so were all planes. I don't recall if it was from her, but somehow we learned about the second plane. We all shook our heads. Shocked. In disbelief.

I left the shop and proceeded to drive across town to a STEP (Support Training for Exceptional Parents,) meeting in a Brentwood clubhouse. En route I listened to the litany of sensationalized news and rumors on the radio. I cannot remember the name of the STEP meetings' leader. I liked her. She was in the class behind me in Partners for Policymaking Leadership. The meeting's attendees exchanged news of what we'd heard, whether we should proceed with our meeting, whether we should rush to our babies and gather them up and head for the safety and shelter of our homes.

The leader decided to begin her presentation and then stopped. We agreed we were all too distracted to meet, listen, to learn about anything but what was going on in our world gone uncertain. We turned on a television set there in the club house and watched a bit of the pandemonium. And then the leader decided to close us in prayer before we made our ways back to our respected burbs and to hold our sweet, special children. I had a sinking feeling. Quickly, knowing that the mother who'd hosted the meeting was Jewish, I asked that we be considerate and respectful of all faiths. Did anyone catch that? Did they understand what I was requesting? They didn't seem to hear me. And the leader proceeded to pray in the name of Jesus Christ....I suppose that my Jewish friend, living here in the South, was used to the insensitive presumption. Of course, our leader meant no harm. She was reaching, probably like the rest of us, clammering upward to grasp the reassuring hand of a God by some name. Some Divine-Healing Being-Beacon of Hope. For some sense of Faith in a world that. Suddenly. Made no sense.

"BJU" still requires its female students to wear skirts below their knees, keep their hair long; the males to don white shirts and ties and keep their hair short. I knew a few drop-outs who told stories of the dating parlors--akin to a large furniture store-room. (I saw it myself during a wedding I attended there.) Students were allowed to sit with their dates there but only so many inches a part and the rules progress even further into the disturbingly bizarre. Among BJU's religion-gone-wacky legacies are its' fervent anti-Catholicism and corresponding condemnation of "Fundie" icons Jerry Falwell and Pat Roberson. The powers that be there even deem Billy Graham as liberal. (ROFLMAO) Note of warning to Mit Romney: Bob Jones III has a thing against Mormons, too, labeling the religion, along with Catholicism "satanic counterfeit."

Ahem. Now to happier thoughts and to what this blog post is really about: As an educational institution, the school excells, at least in it's school of education. Our high school frequently had student teachers from there. And another plum, it's shining star--about which I never knew until I'd left Greenville for good, is the school's extensive religious art collection. About 15 years ago I visited it and was astounding! It is truly one of the most impressive collections and galleries I have ever visited.

So, all the negative commentary aside, it is agreed from the outside looking in that despite its' punitive religious culture, Bob Jones' University's art collection is progressive. I could not locate online the national television interview I watched a few years back where the interviewer sensitively noted this....

Once again: Art. Bridges. Worlds and Breaks Down Barriers.

In his hungry quest for divine art, Dr. Bob Jones, Jr., was a visionary.

"A Divine Light: Northern Renaissance Painting from the Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery," now at Nashville's Frist Center for the Visual Arts, offers new insight to this often overlooked collection.

Premiering at the Frist Center today, September 9 through February 5, 2012, 28 paintings from 15th- and 16th-century Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Spain grace the Frist Center's Upper Galleries. According to Frist: "The exhibition is conceived as an intimate encounter with the devotional art of the Renaissance and explores the way in which 15th- and 16th-century Northern European painters expressed the central mysteries of the Christian faith through setting, pose, gesture and the objects of everyday life.

"These paintings, which are part of a collection better known for its grand Baroque pictures, have been little studied since their acquisition in the mid-20th century. Since that time, considerable advances have been made in analytical methods and connoisseurship of Northern Renaissance paintings and additional archival research has been undertaken. This exhibition presents the examples in the Bob Jones Collection in light of this recent research.

"Prior to the exhibition, the Frist Center sponsored the conservation of four key works, including, most importantly a beguiling Flemish picture known as the Madonna of the Fireplace, which was attributed to the Master of Flèmalle when it was part of the Cook Collection in England during the 19th century. [...] The cleaning and restoration of all four paintings was conducted in the New York laboratory of noted paintings conservator David Bull."

“Very few people seem to be aware that Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery has this treasure trove of rare and beautiful Northern Renaissance paintings,” said Frist Center Associate Curator Trinita Kennedy, organizer of the exhibition. “Visitors to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the National Gallery in London and many of the world’s major museums will see similarities in the works we are presenting here in Nashville. We hope people will take this opportunity to see how the works from the Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery relate to works in those more familiar collections.”

"Dr. Bob Jones, Jr., founder of the museum, collected only religious art and had a strong preference for images of the Virgin and Child, the Holy Family, the Passion and the Holy Face of Christ. This exhibition provides an excellent opportunity to focus attention on developments in alter pieces and devotional paintings during the 15th and 16th centuries. The Bob Jones Collection is one of the largest of its kind in the country, surpassing in size even the notable collections of Harvard, Yale and Princeton." More information at: www.fristcenter.org.

More from Frist Center on The Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery. The institution is "recognized as having one of America’s finest collections of Old Master paintings and is well known for its thorough presentation of the development of Western culture through these works.

Housed on the campus of Bob Jones University, the Museum & Gallery displays Italian, Spanish, French, English, Flemish, Dutch and German sacred art from the 14th through the 19th century. Works by major artists such as Rubens, van Dyck, Reni and Tintoretto are exhibited with period furniture, sculpture, tapestries and porcelains to give visitors a panoramic view of artistic developments.

"Today, 50 years after its inauguration, the collection comprises more than 400 paintings by the Old Masters, nearly 200 pieces of Gothic to 19th-century furniture, approximately 100 works of sculpture, 60 textiles, nearly 50 drawings and prints, more than 1,000 Biblical artifacts and 130 miscellaneous items ranging from stained glass windows to a Byzantine baptistery font."

I'm looking forward to seeing portions of this magnificent art collection again. Are you planning to attend?

(For the record, my dear, deceased mother received a her college associate's degree from Bob Jones University when it was in Cleveland, Tenn. She attended there with at least Ruth Graham if not Billy. Growing up, she always noted that the school she attended was not what it had become in our hometown. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if she ever saw their art collection. The school has also ended its' ban on interracial dating.)

About the painting above: Attributed to Jan Gossaert. "Madonna of the Fireplace," ca. 1500. Oil on panel, 33 x 22 1/8 in. Bob Jones Collection, 1952 [Stunning. Evocative. I couldn't bear to reduce the size to better fit. Notice the depth of the folds of the garments. According to BJU: "Although the Bible records no daily domestic duties that Mary attended to, she must have performed the many necessary, if mundane, tasks that motherhood requires." The artist depicted Mary warming her hands by the adjacent fireplace, to the left, "so that her hands would not be cold as she changed Christ's diaper." Sweet. On many levels.]